Reflected Moments
by LittleLongHairedOutlaw
Summary: Somewhere in France, 1918. It is a year since Erik died, and Faisal remembers all that has happened. (Christine/Daroga, past Christine/Erik/Daroga)


**A/N: A short companion piece to Stolen Moments, referencing euthanasia, war wounds, and containing some sexual references.**

* * *

This time last year they were sitting at Erik's bedside, watching, and waiting for the moment his heart would stop beating.

This year, Faisal draws Christine closer, feels her breath warm against his neck, and the swell of her belly, where their baby lives still.

That the war is over, that they are alive, that the people paraded in the streets to celebrate the coming of peace and all they could do was hold each other close, and close their eyes against the world.

That there is to be a _child_-

That Erik is dead.

That he died and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

That he is dead, and they _helped_ him.

What choice did they have? He was never going to wake, the damage to his head was far too great. He would have lingered, and maybe he was beyond feeling pain, beyond feeling anything at all, but it was kinder, kinder to let him go, kinder to let him rest. What good was it trying to keep his heart beating, trying to keep him breathing, when he could never _be_ again?

No. Faisal does not regret helping him die, does not regret steadying Christine's hand as she eased the hypodermic of morphine back into his arm to give him the second dose.

He regrets only that he had not been there to see him taken out of the ambulance. To meet that gaze, one last time, and see the faint stir of his lips.

(He still remembers the press of those lips, remembers pressing his own lips to them, in a final soft kiss, as Christine set the hypodermic aside.)

(Her lips followed his, but he will always remember Erik's faint gasp into his mouth, as he tried to draw breath.)

(All the will it took, to not force breath into him.)

They sat either side of him, that night, when they made the decision to do it, and held his hands, and lay their heads down on the pillows beside his, the way they sometimes used to sleep when he was with them. And the screens hid them safe from the rest of the ward, as his breath hitched, and gurgled, and ceased.

A single tear shone gold in the lamplight as it slipped over the bridge of Christine's nose.

Faisal's own heart tore as if it, too, would cease, to find no pulse in Erik's throat.

(How many times, at night, before he left them to wander, did he rest his head against Erik's chest, press his fingers into his wrist, just to feel the beating of his heart?)

What force brought him to them to die? What force meant they could be with him at the end?

_Keep him comfortable_, de Chagny had told Christine. Was it keeping him comfortable, to be with him as they stole the life from him?

(He tells himself, has tried to tell himself, that they did not steal the life from him. That the Germans did that, with the shrapnel from their shell. That the bleeding in his brain was doing it. That his shattered ribs and collapsed chest were doing it. That the war did it. That death was stealing upon him slow and all they did was speed it up, all they did was an act of kindness. That he would not have wanted a protracted death and they spared him such.)

They both found excuses, to resign from their positions, when they learned she was expecting a baby.

It was May, and it was Erik's birthday, and it seemed heinous to celebrate the life within her, more heinous still to risk harm befalling it, and she would have been disgraced if anyone had found out, so she manufactured a sister in ill health, and he found a brother at death's door, and they left.

That they were leaving Erik behind, leaving behind the wooden cross marking where he lies, was the hardest part.

That he could not sleep that night, for hearing Erik's final breaths soft in his ear, he did not tell her.

(That she did not sleep that night, for feeling Erik's fading pulse beneath her fingers, she never told him.)

That the act of love that created the baby growing within her was one night's grieving need for closeness given expression they have not spoken of, but he could have sworn he felt Erik's hands upon him as he moved within her, that he felt Erik's lips upon his throat as she gasped into his neck, that he saw a flicker of golden eyes in the darkness as he shuddered against her afterwards.

That Erik came to them that night, and granted them the child they had never spoken of, not as a punishment but as a gift, to thank them for their final kindness to him, he feels deep in his chest.

(They lingered with Erik's body longer than was usual, longer than was needed, kissing him, and stroking his face, and squeezing his fingers even after they laid him out, after Christine slipped the pillow from beneath his head, after they brought the sheets up to his chin, unable to bear just leaving him there, unable to bear parting from him.)

Erik's things came to them, because it was written so in his will, though until he died they had not seen him in almost four years.

And there were two letters, addressed to each of them, to be sent in the event of his death, but they have not opened them, not yet.

Perhaps they will after the baby is born.

Perhaps they never will, but if there were final messages Erik wanted to pass on to them, then they should read them sometime, shouldn't they?

He does not think he could bear seeing Erik's handwriting, not yet.

(More letters for them, untouched, in the box of his things, and that he must have thought of them all along, must have missed them even after he left, must have planned to return and never got the chance-)

It feels as if he could still walk in the door. As if he is still only away on one of his trips, and could return to them at any moment, ready to draw them back into his arms.

(How many nights has Faisal dreamt just such a thing, only to wake with tears, and Christine cradling him close?)

(Why did Erik, of all men, have to die?)


End file.
